I tell her I believe in god

nine hundred and seventy miles away from where we first met

I haven’t been this close to home in five years

There’s a child next to me

who will never say damascus is anything but inheritance

I am too lost in trying to find words

in a language I haven’t used in years

to eat food that is too familiar for me to taste
I am leaving again in three days

Putting distance between us

that I know fevered texts across an ocean will never fill

I am trying to explain why the divine still hasn’t died

That I can no more kill god than I can let her go

There is so much in theory I can speak of

Philosophies to extrapolate how divine doesn’t mean always good

but she knows as much as I do

This has never been about theology
It is about the sand that never really leaves our shoes

The struggle to say p instead of b

The smell of jasmine that follows us everywhere

This has always been about home

and I can’t stop believing in home

even if it means god always will exist in broken things